News Archives: Author Richard Wagamese to Speak at GPRC

Friday, February 8th, 2013

An Evening With Richard Wagamese: Award-Winning Author at GPRC March 5, 2013
Grande Prairie audiences will soon have the privilege of an evening with one of Canada's foremost Native authors and storytellers. Richard Wagamese has been invited to speak at the DJ Cardinal Performing Arts Centre on Tuesday March 5, sponsored by the Sarah Joan Alward endowment fund at GPRC, with support from Grande Prairie Friendship Centre, Native Counselling of Alberta and Métis Local 1990.
Working as a professional writer since 1979, Wagamese has been a newspaper columnist and reporter, radio and television broadcaster and producer, documentary producer and the author of eleven titles from major Canadian publishers with a new novel, Indian Horse, published in early 2012.
He has been a success in every genre of writing he has tried. The 56 year-old Ojibway from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in Northwestern Ontario became the first Native Canadian to win a National Newspaper Award for Column Writing in 1991. As a published author he was won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction for his third novel Dream Wheels, in 2007 and the Alberta Writers Guild Best Novel Award for his debut novel, Keeper'n Me in 1994. Additionally, his memoir One Native Life was one of The Globe and Mail's 100 Best Books of 2008 and the memoir One Story, One Song was awarded the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature in 2011.
An anthology of his newspaper columns, The Terrible Summer was published in 1996 with Warwick Press and his second novel, A Quality of Light, in 1997 from Doubleday. A critically acclaimed memoir entitled For Joshua: An Ojibway Father Teaches His Son arrived in October 2002, Dream Wheels in 2006, and the novel Ragged Company and his acclaimed and bestselling memoir One Native Life in 2008. He published the follow-up to One Native Life, the acclaimed memoir, One Story, One Song in February 2011 and his first collection of poetry, Runaway Dreams, in July 2011, followed by The Next Sure Thing, a novel in Orca Press' Rapid Reads Series in October 2011.
Richard Wagamese has twice won the Native American Press Association Award and the National Aboriginal Communications Society Award for his newspaper columns. Currently, his series One Native Life runs as a radio commentary and newspaper column in both Canada and the U.S. and was a weekly television commentary on CFJC-TV 7 in Kamloops, BC from 2007 to 2010. Richard continues to lead writing and storytelling workshops in communities across the country. He was honored with an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops in June 2010 in recognition of lifetime achievement in writing and publishing and was the 2011 Harvey Stevenson Southam Guest Lecturer in Professional Writing at the University of Victoria. Richard has also been honored with the 2012 National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Media & Communications.
An esteemed public speaker and storyteller, he lives in the mountains outside of Kamloops BC with his wife, Debra Powell, and Molly the Story Dog.
"We are delighted to welcome a speaker of this eminence to our community," says Susan Bansgrove, GPRC Vice-President Academics and Research. "Thank you to our faculty member Duff Crerar and our community partners for their enthusiastic support of this special lecture."
Richard Wagamese will speak on Tuesday, March 5th, 2013 at GPRC's D.J. Cardinal Performing Arts Centre from 7-9:00 pm. This very special evening will include a traditional opening prayer, drumming and dancing, as well as the feature presentation by celebrated and award-winning Ojibway author. Admission by donation at the door - $10 suggested.